In this blog, our correspondents inform and entertain business travellers with news, views and revie

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LAST AUGUST, Gulliver told you about the "eight-week rule" for buying airline tickets . According to Makoto Watanabe, the cheapest time to book your flight, all else being equal, is about eight weeks before you plan to leave. It's a good one-step rule. But what else should you take into account when trying to get a great deal on an expensive flight? The Wall Street Journal 's Scott McCartney has some suggestions . Bottom line: if you buy your tickets midweek (i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday), you can save a bundle. One expert, FareCompare.com's Rick Seaney, has even pinpointed an ideal time to buy: 3pm EST on Tuesday. So why do fares work this way, anyway? Here's Mr McCartney:
Though prices fluctuate frequently and the ups and downs of airline prices can frustrate and anger consumers, airline pricing actually does follow travel agent jobs a cycle during the week. Many sales, in which some seats are discounted travel agent jobs by 15% to 25% typically, are launched travel agent jobs Monday night....
...When airlines want to push through a fare increase, marking up their basic prices across the board usually by $5 or $10, they often do that on Thursday night, then watch to see if competitors match and if the higher rates stick over the weekend. If competitors balk, prices can be rolled back by Monday morning.
In addition, airlines don't manage their inventory as actively on weekends, so if cheap seats sell on some flights, prices automatically jump higher. Fare analysts may decide later to offer more seats at cheaper prices, but not until they come back to work on Monday, according to airline pricing executives.
Mr McCartney's article raises as many questions than it answers. Do corporate travel departments take advantage of airline pricing fluctuations and buy most of their tickets mid-week? How is the development of ever-more sophisticated fare comparison engines, such as Kayak.com, influencing pricing travel agent jobs strategies? Much of Mr McCartney's data came from Kayak. But this definitely seems like a situation where the observer effect comes into play. Can journalists and the public extensively study airline pricing strategies without forcing airlines to respond and adjust?
Mr McCartney also warns that social media such as Facebook and Twitter are "already travel agent jobs beginning" travel agent jobs to "disrupt" airline pricing patterns. It will be fascinating to see how that dynamic continues to evolve. Have any readers ever bought travel agent jobs an airline ticket through travel agent jobs Twitter or Facebook? Would you consider doing so in the future? I follow JetBlue's Twitter account for last-minute sales, but I've never bought any of their " cheeps ." Anyway, what other sorts of ways do you see the rules about how, when, and where it's best to buy airline tickets changing in the coming travel agent jobs years? Let us know in the comments, and check out Mr McCartney's full story for the rest of his tips.
Best way to get cheap air tickets is to consult some good travel agents. Compare prices with different travel agencies and than book cheap tickets. I remeber one travel agent which is situated in Southall UK is Air Ticket. They offered me very good deal may be in future will again book my travel trip with them.
I will have to agree to this, Usually the best time of the week to book tickets, would be before the weekend, and most especially travel agent jobs on Tuesdays. Most airline tickets even announce promos and price drops to be on these days. I've been booking cheap tickets for years and most of my travels have been made possible because of this. Book early, and watch out for cheap tickets travel agent jobs during Tuesdays.
Can someone please tell me how do these travel portals work? Do they purchase some tickets in bulk then resell them give discounts on a few of them? I mean their business model could be such that after selling the bulk-purchased tickets, they could just sell tickets remaining with the airlines using Global distribution systems.
I've heard different travel agent jobs versions from people. I'd like to know how this industry? Can someone please volunteer to spend some time making me cognizant about the business model of this industry? In return, I'll teach you all the physics programming you can ever learn.
Which I guess has a moral of sorts: these 'how to get the cheapest tickets' tricks are a bit academic - most of the time I don't get to decide my travels according to ticket pricing, instead I travel when I need to travel.
I'm not always searching for the cheapest ticket which is why the "sort by agony" on hipmunk.com takes my fancy. It mixes up price, duration, layovers and other secret herbs and spices to allow you to pick the best flight which might not necessarily be the cheapest.
However, they are limited by the source of their data (only Orbitz?) as is Kayak and their ilk. Checking 12+ different websites to compare all possible flights is quite painful so often the search travel agent jobs is limited travel agent jobs to a few that proved good value or impressed in some other way in the past.
To be simple as possible, the variables are too many and different from airline to another which makes it impossible to reach any conclusion about the time of the best price. Airlines use different revenue management systems with different forecasting models and different levels of personal influence to the system. Other variables include (but not limited to) the time of the year, the strength of the destination in the airline network, materialization rate and trend, etc.
The only rule I can reach is the earlier you purchase, the better price you get cos empty flights sell cheaper. Although, this is not always right as we've seen prices drop few days before departure mainly due to wrong forecasting.
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